To get ready to paint the shop side of the basement, I had to put on hat & safety glasses, and hold my breath while scraping the old beams and floor overhead.

I did have a mask on but it was still pretty nasty. All the chips were coated with a black tar from whatever they used to burn for fuel and I am sure contain Lead paint. (So Kelly stayed away for this step…)

After that dirty work the ceiling cleaned up pretty nicely.

We then swept & vacuum all surfaces and masked anything that was not getting painted with plastic, tape, drop clothes, or carpet samples (which make great edge masking).

We have an airless paint sprayer which goes quick and does a nice job but you really need to cover everything that you do not wanted painted.

Everything received a coat of white primer,

And I’m sure you are wondering what’s up with that yellow ceiling?! Well as additional primer/ stain blocker we ended up using up some paint that we bought for the living room and decided we didn’t like it!

The yellows not bad, right? But we are going to give everything a final coat of white to brighten everything up.